TAG: Africa

Introduction of medical abortion methods in Zambia

After two years, 25 of 28 sites provided abortion services, caring for more than 13,000 women during the intervention. For the first time, abortion was decentralized, 19% of all abortion care was performed in health centres. At the end of the intervention, all providing facilities had managers supportive of continuing legal abortion services. When asked about the impact of medical abortion provision, a number of providers reported that medical abortion improved their ability to provide affordable safe abortion.

Grada Kilomba: decolonizing thinking, performing knowledge

Grada Kilomba is a Portuguese writer, scholar and artist who enacts and delivers decolonial knowledge by weaving relations between gender, race and class. She is a professor at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Her work combines a wide range of means — publications, performed lectures and theoretical texts, videos and performances — creating a […]

Uganda’s Abortion Rate: decreased since 2003, but Unsafe Procedures persist

An estimated 314,300 Ugandan women had abortions in 2013, according to a new study conducted by researchers at the U.S.-based Guttmacher Institute and Uganda’s Makerere University. This translates to a rate of 39 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–49, a significant decline from the rate in 2003, which was 51. The study also found that […]

Access to misoprostol through community-based advocacy in Kenya and Tanzania

This initiative proves that, even where abortion is legally restricted and socially stigmatized, community-based organizations can publicly and openly share information about misoprostol and refer it to women by using innovative and effective strategies, without political backlash

Sexual Politics in January 2017

In January, the first and foremost events to be reported are avalanche of draconian and regressive policy measures adopted in the chaotic first two weeks of the Trump administration. Though buried beneath the impact of outrageous closure of borders and decisions about trade agreements – which are subject to contradictory interpretations — gender and sexuality […]

The Trumping of global sexual politics: a preliminary assessment

In the first two weeks of his administration Donald Trump has opened a can of worms spreading around draconian and regressive conservative policy measures to close borders, to retreat from international agreements including in relation to trade and also to signal towards more aggressive military interventions “if required”. As predicted by the tone of the […]

Donald Trump Reinstates the ‘Global Gag Rule’

In one of his first acts as president, Donald Trump has reinstated a federal ban on U.S. funding for international health organizations that counsel women on family planning options that include abortion. Read more on Huffington Post. SPW also recommends for in depth analysis of Trump’s measure, which impacts not only the abortion field but […]

“Not dancing to their music”: report on LGBTQ people in Nigeria

“Not dancing to their music” is a report by Bisi Alimi Foundation, in which 446 LGBT Nigerians completed an online survey that uncovered disturbing stories of mental health abuse, coercion, exclusion, exploitation, isolation, abduction, rape, physical violence and detention. The report suggests that the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act, cultural attitudes, and infrastructure in Nigeria […]

Sexual Politics Round-up in 2016

As 2017 begins, SPW highlights the main events and trends as well as tensions and challenges traversing sexual politics worldwide. January In January, the Zika virus epidemics stormed the headlines, as Brazilian babies affected by Zika congenital syndrome prompted a global alarm. Even though Zika had been previously detected in other countries, the Brazilian epidemic […]

The abortion law reform bill in Malawi that is causing debate on all sides

Newspapers and web-based news sites have carried a flurry of responses to the new abortion bill in Malawi, and has led the country’s president to deny that a bill even exists. The reasons why law reform was proposed by a commission which met from 2012 to 2015 are clear. Studies have revealed that about 70,000 Malawian […]

New online database of abstracts on abortion in Africa 2005-2016

The African Population and Health Research Centre in Kenya has put together a free online database of more than 600 publications related to abortion in Africa, including articles, book chapters, reviews, and commentaries. The database is fully searchable by author, year of publication, title, language, and keywords. Publications focus on the magnitude of abortion and […]

Reflections on Authoring the Chapter on Young Women for the 2016 Arab Human Development Report

After a long delay, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has finally published its latest Arab Human Development Report, ADHR 2016: Youth and the Prospects for Development in a Changing Reality. In this text, we would like to share our misgivings with the final product—more specifically the chapter we were involved with as authors, as […]